judaismwikiaorg-20200222-history
User talk:DeFender1031
Hi, welcome to Judaism! Thanks for your edit to the Template:Stub page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Kirk (Talk) 03:05, 11 June 2009 Welcome and Thank You! Hi, DeFender1031. Welcome and thank you for adopting this wikia! Great job so far. I moved the page G-d back. I'm not one of the people who has issues with the written word, but significant groups of Jews do, and i think this wikia should do its best to respect the different traditions. I have limited time to work on this wiki, but let me know if I can help with anything specific. Also, as the adopter you have the right to adjust the tone, but we weren't trying to make this site encyclopedic before. So individuals' experiences and family traditions were included, not just formal, documented and reference-able facts. -- CocoaZen 20:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC) :Glad to have done it, i'm a serious Jew and it pained me to see the wiki in the state in which it was. :As for the G-d page, If you take a look at Template:Sheim, you'll see that i've been planning to make pages with printable and non-printable versions of pages, as everyone agrees that a computer screen cannot constitute sheimos and i think we could benefit by using uncensored text wherever possible. I was planning on making a Template:Sheimoth as well, which would be a notice that informs the reader that the page contains sheimoth, and if someone would like a non sheimoth printable version, they should look at the subpage "/print" which would be a templated inclusion of the parent page and include non-sheimoth replacements. You bring up a good point that there are some people who are more strict, so i think i'll make the sheimoth template take a parameter as to whether it's strict sheimoth or not that will adjust the wording accordingly, but i do not think we should wholesale censor everything just for the sake of it. Also, i also tend to prefer to use "G-d" over "God" more out of habit and as a sign of respect than because i believe it is actually problematic, but i believe that in the context of this wiki, we should be willing to display names of G-d, so long as we provide a printable version. :At the moment i think i'm fine with it. I have experience in wiki management and am well-versed in wiki markup code. :Finally, I changed the tone because i believe an intellectual, encyclopedic knowledge base has more potential to attract serious jews than a cultural one does. I have no problem with having pages on those topics, but i'd like the main focus to be scholarship and intellectualism. :Let me know what you think about the above topics. 03:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC) ::Please wait to change to "God", until you've got the printing version working correctly. (And, it's probably a good idea to put a note somewhere about doing that and why, maybe on your "Names of God" article?) ::I'd love to have more mature content. I have a tendency to leave content from other contributors, for instance the spoiler alert, even when I'm not thrilled with it. I tried to respect the different contributions even when I didn't like them, and to focus on cleaning up some misinformation, vandalism and comments that were disrespectful to the different groups of Jews. For instance, I try to eliminate the term "observant" to describe Orthodox, but not those observing in other ways. On the flip side, I've tried to respect the beliefs of those who follow rules I don't. I was thinking that a template to flag areas of serious disagreement based on denomination might be useful. ::Like you, I adopted this wiki because it needed it. But between work and some other life events, I wasn't able to work on it as much as I would have liked, so I put the adoption notice out. And I've tried to keep an eye out for vandalism even when I couldn't edit. ::I don't think a more serious tone means that we can't include content about different cultural traditions. I liked what you said about having a JPOV. And although Jews have traditionally had a high respect for scholarship and intellectualism, I think that the different cultural heritages, that many people confuse with the actual religious rules, are an interesting area to explore. I tried to seed the site with a variety of different types of articles. I also like the majority of the changes you've made. Thank you. ::-- CocoaZen 13:42, 18 June 2009 (UTC) :::I agree with everything you said pretty much. I intend to make the Names of God page next, followed by Sheimoth with will be similar, but with more focus toward how holy documents are to be treated. (The sheimoth template already links there, which at the moment is a redlink.) I have the censorship system pretty much in place, i'm just waiting to see whether wikia will enable loose DISPLAYTITLE for us or whether i'll have to use the JS hack to change title names (I sent them an email explaining why we want this feature, which i will post at the end of this reply.) As for cultural traditions, it actually bothers me quite a lot how much people confuse custom for law, and i would like to have a wide range of both types of articles, making sure to clearly state what is custom and what is law. (When it comes to the orthodox perspective of course, obviously, we'll also state that other denominations take other opinions where applicable.) I also like your idea of a point of contention template that will let people know that the given topic is one of debate and reminding them to keep a cool head and respect all opinions. My editing plan has basically been to start from the most important and least controversial topics, and move downward from there, hence God, being the most important theological concept in Judaism and most widely accepted, was first on my list. I suppose the name thing became a bit controversial between you and me, but i think i came up with a system that will satisfy everyone. I also intend to write Judaism:Sheimoth (Note: in the project namespace) to highlight how exactly the censoring system works. 19:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC) ::::I made a template, and finished the censoring system. What do you think? 08:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC) Shabbos So, should Shabbos have its own article? Or be a redirect to Shabbat? It has a different connotation to some, but I think it would be ok as a redirect. I'll set it up that way. But I think it would be a reasonable separate article, if that's what you'd like. -- CocoaZen 21:30, 17 June 2009 (UTC) :I think we should use scholarly spellings whenever possible, hence "Sabbath" would probably be the way to go. 03:56, 18 June 2009 (UTC) ::Terminology is going to be difficult, isn't it? I favored the Hebrew terms over the English translations or Yiddish phrases. So, I used Shabbat, Pesach and Hanukkah, rather than Sabbath, Passover and Festival of Lights. But, I'm ok with either, and redirects from the alternative names. ::Let's go with "women" for names, like Esther, or "baby girls" or "female babies", just "girls" is disrespectful. Substitute "David", would you say that's a common boys' name or...? You can say it in terms of the people walking around with the name or the time at which they are named. :: -- CocoaZen 13:42, 18 June 2009 (UTC) :::I WOULD, in fact, call "David" a "common boys' name". I think this is probably nitpicky, we have bigger fish to fry, we can worry about trivial wording later. The transliteration of Hebrew words is more of a "big fish", as our naming scheme and writing style will depend heavily on it. I tend to use the scholarly method to transliterating and names for things because i value consistency, and as far as i know, it's the only consistent standard that exists and has clear rules. Everything else I encountered allows for multiple spellings of the same word. 19:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC) IRC It would be good to have a "live" conversation as you suggested. Looks like we are in different time zones. I'm usually in the US Eastern time zone. And while I occasionally check for vandalism or messages during a break, my work day is rather long. Let's see if we can figure something out. -- CocoaZen 13:42, 18 June 2009 (UTC) :Actually, i'm in EST as well at the moment. I'm not quite sure where you got the idea that i'm in a different timezone as i haven't posted much about myself on this wiki. Just to share a bit about myself I actually DO live in israel, have done so for the past 4 years as a student, and i will be formally making aliyah in a couple of months, but for the moment i am in the states visiting my family. Also, when i AM in israel, i tend to be completely nocturnal... i often say that like any orthodox jew, i wake up, go to davening, have another davening in the middle, and daven before going to sleep, but unlike most, my order is mincha, maariv, shacharis. All that being said, I tend to be around in the afternoon and evenings EST, so any time between say 3 and however late you're crazy enough to go to sleep would probably work. 19:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC) ::Hi. I'm on now. I'll take an early "lunch break" and try to chat. -- CocoaZen 15:32, 19 June 2009 (UTC) :::I'll be here. 15:33, 19 June 2009 (UTC) The Email I Sent to Wikia Username: DeFender1031 Wiki name: http://judaism.wikia.com Real name: Dan Email address: (private) Subject: We have a bit of an interesting request. We would like for the option to be set on judaism.wikia to allow to take any name given, rather than restricting it to one that normalizes to the actual title. The reason for this slightly unusual request is because in the Jewish religion, certain names of G-d are considered to be holy, and have certain laws surrounding them when printed on paper. We are therefore providing both holy and non-holy versions of pages that contain such names. The holy versions contain the names intact, while the non-holy versions employ euphamisms, dashes, and other means of avoiding having the names written out. Our censoring system uses subpages in the form "uncensoredpage/print". In other words, if a page uncensored page has somewhere on it, for example, "God", the page uncensored page/print would have "G-d" in its place. I'm aware that under normal circumstances, the preferred method of distinguishing between two pages of the same name is to have a (disambig suffix), but as the text will be nearly identical and the pages are related, it made more sense to do it this way, especially since we can have the censoring template detect the subpage and automatically link the base page, or vice-versa. Whether we use disambig suffixes or subpages for distinguishing between them, the fact remains that a noticeable addition will be left in the displayed title, and having that addition in this case would be rather useless and ugly. This is especially true in the case of someone printing out several different pages, some of which needed censoring and some which did not. In such a case, it would be inconsistent to have some pages with a plain title and some with the suffix "/print" for reasons that make sense only in the context of on-wiki data management. For all of those reasons, we would like both versions to display the same title. Obviously, having two pages displaying the same title would be impossible without the ability to change the displayed title, as the database can't contain two pages with the same name. I have been shown a javascript hack to allow title changing, but i would prefer the html to be hard-coded so that even users without JS enabled will see the intended title. I am also aware of specific CSS hacks and a couple of other tricks, all of which have various drawbacks to them, such as displaying incorrectly if there's a sitenotice, or failing completely if the name contains certain characters. I view this as a simple thing to enable, and we would appreciate it very much if you would set this option. Thank you for your time. 19:50, 18 June 2009 (UTC) :Further to this, i recieved an email informing me that they have enabled the option. We're good to go. 20:11, 18 June 2009 (UTC) Hey I've noticed you've been making alot of edits lately, thanks for contributing so much. It's good to see someone actually keeping after this... keep up the good work! :I'm glad you approve. I'm hoping to really build this into something, but we'll see how much time i end up having for it in the future. Hopefully by the time i'm too busy to make hundreds of edits a day, we'll have a decent sized community to continue the work i've started... Only time will tell. 01:57, 23 June 2009 (UTC) Clean-up Excellent new logo! I'll follow your lead on responding to your note within the same page. -- CocoaZen 23:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC) :Thanks. I figured we couldn't really go wrong in terms of offending anyone with a simple Torah Scroll with our name on it. (Even though the torah depicted is decidedly ashkenazi-style, and sephardic torahs are constructed very differently, having an adorned cover being a working part of the scrolling apparatus, sephardim aren't offended by ashkenazi torahs, just like Monaco users aren't offended by people who prefer Monobook.) I also felt like the torah was the only "symbol of judaism" that is both universally accepted and considered meaningful across all denominations. For example, to some, things like chamtzas and chais tend to be considered more cutesy symbols to put on necklaces and sell to tourists, menorahs tend to be more of a hanukkah symbol, and the star of david could offend the serious anti-zionists. As for matzah, well... no one really wants to be reminded of that little talked about event that happens for around a week after pesach which i like to call "the matzah block" ;) 02:30, 25 June 2009 (UTC) ::Some suggestions for the clean-up period... ::I recommend creating new content prior to removing old content. For instance, create new categories, like terminology and add the older articles to it as you remove the older category (terms), instead of removing the older category first -- that makes it harder to see what direction to go. In this example, it would make sense to also add a note on the old category page explaining what's going on. ::On other wikia where I've participated in a clean-up period, we often had a project page in the wiki's namespace to explain to people who would be willing to help out what the activities and intent were and to document progress. ::This wiki will be read by non-Jews as well as Jews, and people with differing levels of knowledge on the topics. So, some pages may seem overly simplistic or obvious to some readers, but be absolutely necessary to others for understanding. As a starting point, you can think of the Four Sons of Pesach -- young readers or ones just starting to learn about Judaism, simple readers (those without the capacity or desire to go into depth at this time), wicked editors (vandals, etc.) and those ready to dive into more depth. ::Terminology pages like monotheistic are useful for basic concepts, explaining how central it is and how Judaism brought the concept to much of the rest of the world. It can also be a link into other related topics. Pages like Jewish aren't just for dictionary definitions (see talk:Jewish). ::So, I think it's good to ask whether they belong here and to encourage expansion and the addition of a template that indicates they are currently incomplete, maybe even an announcement that if there isn't more to add, they will be deleted after a period for discussion. ::Of course the "create before delete" concept does not apply to removing vandalism or offensive content. ::-- CocoaZen 16:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC) :::You make a good point. Normally, I would discuss before deleting, but as there's not really a community to discuss with, I've been making the decisions on my own. I wasn't sure how active you were gonna be, and you haven't really been on IRC, so i made the judgment call on my own. If you would prefer, I will be less unilateral in the future (note, there are several pages where i did discuss rather than delete.) As for creating before deleting, I don't agree. It's useful to not have those pages there, so that once everything is cleaned up, i can see exactly what categories we need to create without the clutter of the old ones. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to put up a sitenotice though, saying that the wiki is being renovated. 17:18, 28 June 2009 (UTC) ::::If there's not going to be a replacement, then deletion makes sense. But you run the risk of accidentally creating edit wars, if you delete something because you have a new, improved version in mind for the future, the page may be recreated and create confusion. For example, I almost recreated the category Symbol because I was on a page that was in that category and it showed the category page as not having been created yet. ::::I'm neutral about whether images belong in categories or not, but there are still a bunch in that category (Symbol). I'm suggesting that you either remove or replace the old category before deleting it, so you don't leave a gap during the transition. To me, going to a stub page that has a sentence or two and an acknowledgment that it needs to be further developed is better than having a bunch of red links. And if they use the stub template, it's easy to find the pages that need more work. ::::But, you're the leader now, so I'm just making suggestions based on my experience. You're welcome to use your experience and preferences as a basis for your renovation. (If I felt more strongly about this, I'd say so.) ::::We were following the Wikipedia capitalization for the most part, like Biblical characters instead of Biblical Characters. Some Wikia do, but others don't. ::::I'm rarely on the IRC, but I'm on various Wikia, at least checking for vandalism regularly. But, as I said earlier, my workload has been high recently, so I haven't had much time for contributing. (I really should be doing some other chores now, but ;-) I may be wiki-addicted. And it's more fun now that there are some other contributors. Want to drop by the Home wikia sometime? I've been thinking of creating some cross-over articles, like mezuzah.) ::::-- CocoaZen 18:25, 28 June 2009 (UTC) :::::You make valid points. I wasn't really anticipating edit wars with only two of us, but i see how what you're saying will provide better communication, especially since you don't have time for IRC. I will implement your ideas now. As for the capitalization, title case just makes more sense to me. Thanks for the suggestions, they're always welcome. If you have any more, please feel free. 18:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC) Sticking around I'm going to stick around and drop in from time to time, so I'd like for you to fix it. :I'll put it in the right place, but you've gotta be the one to fix your preferences. 19:25, 30 June 2009 (UTC) ::Done. In your preferences, make sure your sig is set to be . 19:30, 30 June 2009 (UTC) Thanks Hi. I've been here before, but it's been a long time. Nice to see the wiki growing. Robin 23:21, 2 July 2009 (UTC) Checking in How's everything going, pal? '- ''cchristian (Former Administrator)''' Talk. 11:32, March 2, 2012 (UTC) :Not bad, though haven't had much time for this wiki in quite a long time now... Grew up, finished school, got a real job, a wife, etc. How bout you? 11:47, March 2, 2012 (UTC)